


The Dandelion Child

by lilcogs



Category: Everlark - Fandom, The Hunger Games
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 13:14:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4830383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilcogs/pseuds/lilcogs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An Everlarked tale of the Brothers Grimm's 'Rapunzel'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dandelion Child

**Author's Note:**

> This was a challenge for me to write because the language is much different in a fairy tale than in modern day speech. But, nonetheless, I hope you enjoy! :)  
> Find me on Tumblr at everlark-af.

There once was a man and a woman who had tried unsuccessfully to have a child their entire married lives. They had no sooner given up on this dream than the wife finally conceived, and the couple delighted in this news. Very soon, they began to prepare for the arrival of their miracle child.

    Their humble little house overlooked a lovely garden in which grew a myriad of blossoms. This garden, however, was not to be trespassed upon, for it belonged to an old dame by the name of Effie, who was known to everyone in town to be a cruel old mistress.

    One day the wife, now heavily pregnant with their blessed fetus, looked upon the flower bed and was struck with a great desire to possess a collection of the brilliant yellow dandelions that grew there. She called her husband into the room and told him of her wishes. The man, never wishing to displease his wife, who he loved very much, readily agreed to do her bidding.

    He hoisted himself lithely over the wall of the woman- Effie’s- property and plucked three dandelions for his pregnant wife. Upon his return home with the delicate blooms, the woman praised and thanked him, then at once made herself a salad of the dandelions. She enjoyed the meal so much that she expressed her need for it again the next day. Her husband immediately complied and went about removing the weeds from the garden, just as he had the previous day.

This time, however, the old witch Effie happened to traipse out of her house, and in doing so caught the man overstepping his boundaries.

“How dare you enter my property and steal my blooms?” she cried.

“But madam,” the man answered, “they are but weeds! My wife is heavy with the weight of our growing child and insisted she could not survive without making a meal of these dandelions.”

“It matters not!” the old bat bellowed. “You are trespassing and I shall make you suffer for it!”

She threatened him with the powers she possessed as an enchantress until the man begged for a way to be forgiven.

She finally gave in to his pleas. “If your wife is with-child as you say, then I will allow you to take as many of these dandelions as you wish, on one condition: I receive the child your wife brings into the world, for which I will provide love and care.”

The man, in his terror, agreed to the witch’s terms, and she sent him away with the last of her dandelions.

When the day came that the wife was taken to bed and birthed their baby girl, the enchantress appeared at the door and went away with the child- their dandelion child.

The girl, named Katniss by the old witch Effie, became the most beautiful child the world had ever seen. She had hair of black silk, which grew quickly with the passing years, and her eyes of molten steel could tame even the wildest of wolves. When Katniss was twelve, Effie locked the girl in a tower. The structure had no stairs and no door, only a small window at the top. Katniss spent her days teaching herself to shoot animals on the ground and birds that flew by the window using the bow and arrow that the enchantress had given her as a small child. When Effie wanted to come in to the tall tower after a long day of running errands, she would call to the girl:

_“Katniss, let down your hair to me.”_

Katniss had beautiful, opulent hair, long and thick around as a tree trunk. When the witch called out to her the little girl would unwind the braided tresses and lower them to the woman below.

After several years, the king’s son- unbeknownst to Katniss- rode nearby in the forest, perched on his steed. At once he heard a song so sweet that he was forced to stop and listen. What he did not know was that the voice belonged to Katniss, the beautiful girl who had spent a large part of her life in the tall tower wishing to have a life of her own. Every bird in the wood around the man stopped to take in this magnificent tune, and the prince- who went by the name of Peeta- took notice of this detail. It was part of the reason why the voice was so alluring to him. Approaching the tower, he was met with the most captivating dame he had ever laid his eyes upon. Her long, silky hair was black as midnight, and just as thrilling, and her olive skin practically glowed in the rays of sunlight that kissed it. Her eyes were bright and clear and so was her honeyed voice. Peeta searched endlessly for a door or stairs up to the window out of which the girl leaned, but he came up empty. He rode home, her song ringing in his ears until he was forced to return the next day.  

Once, as he found his perch in a tree branch with a view clear to the window of the enticing girl, a peculiar woman with a hunch for a back and limp strands of blonde hair approached the area below the girl’s window. Then she cried:

_“Katniss, let down your hair to me.”_

The dark satin of the girl’s hair was lowered immediately, and the woman below climbed it.

“If that is the means by which I must meet this girl, then it is done,” Peeta decided to himself.

Then he smiled.  _Katniss_. The mysterious girl finally had a name.

The next day when he returned to the tower, much earlier than he knew the old woman to, he used the trick he had seen the day prior.

_“Katniss, let down your hair to me.”_

At once the hair fell to him and he climbed faster than he knew possible.

Katniss’s face was even more awe-inspiring up close. Her eyes were grey, he realized- though they were much warmer than one might think- and the lashes that surrounded them were so thick and dark Peeta was sure she could not see through them. There was a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and her tempting lips were full and rosy.

Before she could get a word out or perhaps scream for help, Peeta told her who he was and that her marvelous song had led him there days ago. Then he held up the basket of sweets he had brought and smiled shyly.

Peeta wondered if he had imagined the small, bright smile that flickered across Katniss’s face before she plucked one of the pastries from the basket with a dainty hand. Nonetheless, he had never seen a more bewitching sight in all of his life.

And so it went like this, each day passing with Peeta on his horse and Katniss letting down her hair for him, the prince with his baked bread and the damsel with her voice of shining crystal, clear and high.

One day Peeta told her of his heartache when he left in the evenings and of his need to have her every minute of every day, his need to be with her somewhere outside of the tower where they could be free and joyous and without fear of old Effie. He asked her to be his wife for ever and ever.

Katniss was stricken at first at the offer. Then she remembered he was young and handsome and- she realized at once- in possession of her whole heart. She knew that there would be no other chances for anything quite like this.

    So she agreed, but she told him in warning that, even if they were able to find a way down, together, from the tower, the old woman would be hard to avoid, and that they would have to be methodical in their escape.  Peeta agreed at once and went away for the night, promising her freedom for the coming day.

    Before Peeta arrived the next day, Katniss pulled Effie to the window with her hair and griped about how difficult it was becoming to lift the woman anymore.

    “How is it,” Katniss asked Effie, “that it takes so long for me to pull you to the window, but with the king’s son I can lift him in a second?”

    The old woman reacted instantly, and in her rage she wrapped Katniss’s long, dark tresses around her hand and sliced them right off with a pair of scissors. And, showing no mercy, she sent Katniss into the desert to live in great misery and loneliness.

    Later that day when Peeta arrived at the tower, he shouted his usual command, and the  hair was lowered to him. But when he reached the window it was not Katniss who greeted him with her lovely smile and stormy eyes but Effie, with a wicked grin and Katniss’s severed hair in her hand.

    “Ha, you fool! Katniss has paid the price for her deception, and now you shall, as well.” Effie lifted the pair of scissors she had used earlier and opened them so that the sharp edge was at poor Peeta’s throat. “She is in a far-off desert. You will never be with her again.”

    Peeta wept for his imminent death but also for Katniss, his angelic Katniss who was now lost to him. In his anguish he leapt from the tower window, but not before the witch could cut him with her blade, long and deep down his leg.

    He stumbled around the forest for quite some time, the wound in his leg catching infection and causing him a tremendous pain. But he continued on, surviving on nothing but roots and berries for several years before finally reaching the desert. There, he found his Katniss, the ends of her hair frayed and her heart broken but otherwise largely unharmed. In her arms she held their two children, the girl with raven hair and cornflower-blue eyes that matched her father’s, and the smaller boy with curly blonde hair and the steely eyes of his mother.

    When Katniss laid her eyes on him they both wept and ran to each other, and Katniss’s voice was so familiar to Peeta that he felt whole again. The four of them returned to Peeta’s kingdom soon afterward, where the children lived happily with their father and their dandelion mother.


End file.
